1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electronic shelf label provided on an article display shelf, and an article information display system using electronic shelf labels.
2. Description of the Related Art
In Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2001-209861, an article information display system which uses electronic shelf labels and can electronically rewrite article information of the shelf label from a remote place is disclosed. By using the system, for example, the price display of the electronic shelf label can be changed at the time of price change of an article for special sale on a real time basis.
In Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. H7-271862, an article information display system having shelf labels provided on the display shelf and an information display device provided independently from the display shelf is disclosed. The information display device is placed near the article display shelf on which articles on special sale are displayed. A strong appeal cannot be made to the customers only by the price change of the shelf label at the time of price change for special sale. A strong appeal can be made to the customers by displaying special sale information on a large scale on the information display device.
In recent years, in most of the distribution retail businesses, a point-service system is introduced in order to corral the customers. In this system, points are given to the customers according to the sales amount. The thus given points are accumulated for each customer. The accumulated points are each converted into the amount of money, and used for payment of the price for a purchased article or the like.
The customer may want to get information on the actual price of an article when accumulated points are used for payment of the article. However, with the conventional technique, the price derived based on the performance or the like of the customer or so-called user price cannot be displayed on the electronic shelf label.